


But Now I See

by TheAmethystRiddle



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 21:30:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7285450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAmethystRiddle/pseuds/TheAmethystRiddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eris would never regain the things she had lost to the Hive. But perhaps she would find new things and new ways to live on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Now I See

Eris Morn had been dead five years the day she returned to the Tower.

If it had been up to her, she would have remained dead. Life among the Hive had become simple. Hiding was easy. Scrounging without hope for the remnants of her fireteam was familiar. To leave the Moon’s caverns was to brush again with new danger, to return at least in part to the life of a Guardian. And without her Ghost, that life could become death very easily.

But the whispers had been too loud and too eager to ignore. Somewhere underneath the fog of sheer survival, her old instincts stirred. She knew she had a duty to fulfill.

So she had limped her broken way back to the life she had given up on so many years ago. The Light of so many Guardians, of the Traveler itself, burned her skin just as the tendrils of Darkness once had. She tied a blindfold around the corruption her eyes betrayed. Even here, she would be hidden. Even here, she would be an outcast.

She had not expected a welcome of any sort – not even the whispers and the questions. Not the blaze of Light that reached out to touch her arm with a gentleness she hadn’t known in all those years.

“Welcome home, Eris.”

Ikora. It was the first name she learned that was not in the ghastly growls and clicks of the Hive tongue. It was the first name she spoke when her voice returned, desperate to give the Vanguard her terrible warning. She thought she would have to fight for belief – even in her own mind, she felt sometimes as though she was mad. The Darkness wound its way around her thoughts so that the words that left her mouth were jumbled and frantic. But Ikora had trusted her immediately.

And Crota had fallen. Hundreds of Guardians had scoured the Earth and Moon to drive out his ilk – hundreds of Guardians who believed her because they believed Ikora. It felt like home, then. The Light no longer burned her skin.

When they asked, she was frightened to move into the Vanguard hall. She had grown comfortable hovering at the edges of the Light, touching the world of the Guardians but not quite in it. That far in the Tower, everything was ablaze. Shaxx’s light towered over her; Zavala’s light reached down the hall like a lance. Cayde-6 flickered and fluttered like a trapped bird, and every passing Guardian was a blur of heat and power. But Ikora shined brightest of them all. If there was something brighter than Light, that was Ikora.

Those first days, she was blind again. Truly blind. She jumped each time a Guardian approached and flinched each time a voice rang out. Everything was Light and heat and she exchanged her wares for Glimmer and wax idols with trembling, lost hands. When Ikora’s impossible Light reached out to touch her arm again, Eris almost cried out.

“Come with me.”

Ikora’s voice was low and gentle like everything she did. Eris allowed Ikora’s hand on her elbow to lead her out of the hall and into the cold air of the Tower balcony, away and away from the fires behind her. She felt the familiar ground of her old post under her feet as they stopped.

“I can no longer live among so much Light,” she said, wrapping her fingers around the railing and letting the heat seep from her hands. Perhaps it was her fate to belong nowhere.

“Yes, you can. You are still made of Light, Eris. You’re still one of us.”

“Am I?” Were those tears rolling down her cheeks or just the Darkness that leaked like smoke from her eyes?

“Yes.”

The answer was so simple. Eris choked back a sob, gripping the railing tighter as though she meant to bend it between her hands. Ikora always gave Eris her trust without condition or expectation. It was almost more frightening than the pain of the Light or the isolation. Ikora stood still, so silent and so bright, as Eris composed herself again.

“I have never seen your face,” she said when she could pry her fingers from the metal. I will never see a face again, she thought as the shaking returned.

Ikora took her hand. The pads of her fingers were soft and cool as she turned Eris’s hand upward and traced the lines of her palm. Eris tried to still her own trembling, but as Ikora touched the veins in her wrist she found herself trembling harder. Her breath seemed caught in her throat.

When Ikora pressed Eris’s hand softly to her face, Eris almost pulled it away in shock. Almost. After the dizziness had passed she felt confident enough to move, to brush her fingers over the features Ikora had silently invited her to “see.” Thick brows, soft eyelashes fluttering as eyes closed. Smooth skin, flat nose, a huff of breath on her palm as Eris raised her other hand to trace a wide jaw back and up to ears whose tips pointed up almost elfin. Short, fuzzy hair at her temples and then Eris drifted down over wide cheekbones to what she had been hiding from – soft lips, mouth open as another ragged breath escaped as Eris traced a single finger over top lip, bottom lip.

She pulled her hand away, fighting the desire to see Ikora’s face again, to never look away. She held the hand that had touched Ikora’s lips in her other, cradling it as though it held a dear secret. Perhaps it did.

“Now you have seen me,” Ikora said, and Eris could hear none of what she had felt when Ikora had gasped at her touch.

“Yes.” The silence stretched between them like a taut string. Neither of them wanted to leave. “You are beautiful,” she said finally. For once the words came out exactly as she meant them.

“As are you.” Eris would not have believed the words from anyone else. The silence stretched one more moment and then Ikora took her by the chin and leaned down to press a kiss to her cheek, unafraid of the Darkness. It was Eris’s turn to gasp. Whether Ikora’s grip tightening on her chin was reaction or intent, she did not know. Ikora pulled away and then let her hand fall, her fingers as reluctant to leave as Eris’s had been. “Take your time here. You will adjust to the Light eventually. Be well, Eris.”

With that she slipped away, her beacon merging again with the blaze of the Vanguard hall as Eris watched. She took a deep breath. Ikora was right. She would move into the Light; she would move forward. She would no longer hide from her old home.

When she returned to the hall, the Light no longer seemed so blinding.

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like to extend a personal "God bless you" to the two other people who have written for this pairing. #justrarepairthings


End file.
